Algorithms regarding the leader election are known: http://en/wikipedia/org/wiki/Leader_election. DE 10 2011 078 045 A1 additionally discloses methods and devices for allocating quantities of energy.
New energy grids, also referred to as soft grids, are composed of autonomous regions, which are also referred to as islands or grid regions and which are balanced among one another by means of the mutual distribution of the energy. This balancing can be realized by a node, which is also referred to as a dispatcher or optimizer and which, on the basis of energy intervals requested by the autonomous regions, collects all the required information by means of a generic interface and/or to which this information is transmitted. Required information may comprise, depending on the island, for example, a forecast energy demand, a forecast energy output and/or flexibility with regard to the forecast energy demand and/or energy output of the island.
The dispatcher then attempts to calculate the optimum distribution of the available energy over the autonomous regions and assigns energy transfers to the latter.
There are various possible approaches for optimizing the distribution of the available energy. The energy flows can be controlled centrally by means of an external dispatcher/optimizer or by one of the peers, that is to say one of the islands, being chosen as a node for the dispatcher/optimizer which calculates the transmissions of energy by means of an algorithm having low complexity.
However, an individual central management node configured as a dispatcher entails disadvantages such as communication bottlenecks, load spikes at one of the peer nodes or a single point of failure. Moreover, it is possible for the central management node to yield only suboptimal results on account of limited time available to it, limited computing power and limited memory space.
In order to alleviate these disadvantages, the following approaches may be employed:                provisioning the dispatcher with increased resources, e.g. a better CPU;        passing on the dispatcher role among the available nodes, e.g. always to the node having the fullest battery;        a central dispatcher with redundant or overprovisioned communication connections;        concepts for failsafe protection, such as e.g. hot backup of the dispatcher;        heartbeat monitoring of the dispatcher and selection procedure for replacement in the case of a malfunction.        
However, these approaches only alleviate individual disadvantages, and moreover require an increased outlay for their implementation.